Printed images such as photographs, documents, artwork, maps, and the like often have no backup copy, such as a digital copy of a document (e.g., a signed contract) stored on a computer disk, or original negative of a photograph now lost over time. Consequently printed images often representative single points of failure of information included in the printed images. If the printed image is lost or destroyed, the information in the printed image is also lost or destroyed.
Often a printed image is torn into multiple pieces by inadvertent circumstance, such as when a toddler finds a family photo album and tears vintage photographs to pieces. Without a backup copy of the image, the torn pieces must be reassembled and repaired to recover the information in the image. Reassembly and repair of the image pieces is usually done by manual methods that require significant time and effort, even from a trained professional. Consequently, the cost can be prohibitively high when securing the services of trained professionals, such as photo labs, to reassemble and repair torn image pieces, accompanied by a long wait for a reconstructed image (e.g., days or weeks). Moreover, because the process is manual, the results are not repeatable, so that one photo lab may provide significantly better finished products than another photo lab, based on the skill level, determination, and mood of the trained professionals at the time they are doing the reassembly and repair.
Furthermore, trained professionals may be limited to the torn images pieces they are provided for repair purposes, such as relying on material from one of the torn image pieces when filling in a hole of a torn image piece. Depending on the missing information (e.g., information lost in the hole), such repair methods that are limited to using the torn image pieces for fill material may not provide acceptable compensation.
Moreover, for a neophyte user to image restoration, the process of reassembling and repairing torn image pieces may be daunting, for example taking days of work on modern image processing applications available to computing devices, such as Adobe's Photoshop®. Even after considerable effort, the neophyte user is not guaranteed acceptable results.